“Yes. One thirty.”
I looked at the time on the phone display. “Could we make it—”
“One thirty.”
He hung up.
“How rude,” I said. “Don’t you think so, Snowflake?”
She didn’t answer my question, other than to emit a rattling snore against my foot.
I got to work diligently on preparing files and assembling background information for Phil’s case. I kept the printer busy churning out nothing of any great consequence, but it was all work that had to be done, and I felt mildly virtuous. Jack stayed sequestered in his office the whole time, his bright red phone light making me feel like a third wheel. Occasionally his voice rumbled through the walls, but he wasn’t a loud talker, so as close as I pressed my ear against the sheetrock, I couldn’t make out a word he was saying.
After nearly two hours of productivity, I decided to drop Manuela’s check in the FedEx box and to grab lunch on the way to meet the mysterious Abel. First though, I took Snowflake out to the Maxor courtyard for her midday constitutional and stopped for my own on the way back. When we returned to the office for the purse I’d forgotten, Jack was gone.
“He was just waiting for a chance to escape so he didn’t have to talk to me.” I told Snowflake.
She looked sad, so I assumed she agreed.
“Well, girl, that means you have to come with me.”
I was feeling rebellious so I lowered the soft top and let Snowflake ride shotgun instead of in her usual spot in the backseat. We went through a Taco Bell drive-through together, and I ordered her a beef and bean burrito. I pulled the tortilla open to expose the good stuff inside and set it on its wrapper on the front seat with her. She gobbled it down like she’d missed a week of meals. I ate my hold-the-beef version at a more sedate pace as we drove. The weather was a mild seventy-five and the wind at one-tenth its normal near-cyclone velocity. The sky was partly cloudy, just enough to keep the sun pleasant on my face without the need for SPF 50. I pulled to a stop at a red light and tilted my face up, closing my eyes behind my aviator sunglasses.
The explosive sound of a Harley’s straight pipes shattered my serenity as it rolled up beside me. A wolf whistle made my eyes flick open, but I tried to move slowly back into a normal driving posture, so as not to let the whistler know he’d bothered me.
“Hey, hot stuff, good-looking bitch you got there,” a man shouted.
I turned to give him a piece of my mind and saw Wallace on the back of the Harley beside me, his boyfriend, Ethan, in front of him. They were decked out in brand new biker gear: fringed black leather chaps, black vests, and bandanas around their wrists.
“Takes one to know one,” I shouted back with a straight face.
“That’s not your Mustang.” He pointed.
“Duh.”
The light turned green and Ethan grinned and revved the bike. They burned rubber, smoke curling from under their back wheel.
“They’re playing hooky from work,” I explained to Snowflake, who strained against her seat belt and whined, watching them roar off. I shot a quick text to Wallace: Ethan is f-i-n-e FINE. What’s he doing slumming with you? Seeing them—knowing Wallace had been helping Nadine with her boys—reminded me that Nadine hadn’t decided whether or not she needed Jack and me to keep them for a few days. I drove on until we reached the next stoplight.
I typed a quick text to Nadine: Offer stands for your boys to stay at Shangri-La. Made progress through Manuela. That mysterious witness I told you about earlier called, too. Going to meet him.
A horn honked behind me. The light had turned green. I put my phone down and resumed driving. I parked the Mustang ten minutes later in a lot on the edge of Thompson Park. There was a green space filled with picnic tables and tall, budding leaves on one side of the blacktop and the zoo on the other. Since it was midday on a Wednesday during the school year, I didn’t exactly have to fight for a space, although there were a little better than a handful of cars, mostly on the edge closest to the zoo.
I pressed a button to raise the soft top back into place, then unclipped Snowflake. “You’re coming with me, girl. I need a watchdog.”
She hopped down and danced in place while I attached her leash. We set off together toward the edge of the golf course with my determined little fur ball straining against the leash and panting. “Heel, Snowflake.” Her eyes lifted to me, anguished, and she fell in on my left side. I took up the leash slack. She continued to put a little weight against it, but with less potential damage to her trachea. “Good girl.”
I knew this park well. For about one minute in high school I ran cross-country. The only meet I participated in was held here. In fact, Abel had asked me to meet him very near where I’d crossed the finish line over a decade ago, panting and determined that I would never race again except on horseback. Snowflake and I reached a good spot on the edge of some trees, and I sat down, dropping her leash. She shot me a questioning look.
“I’ll let you run around as long as you stay close and I can catch you without a fire drill.” Snowflake was awfully quick for a dog with legs the length of my hands. When leashless, she could lead you on a merry chase if she had a mind to.
For several minutes, she traumatized butterflies and investigated smells. Her nose was caked with dirt immediately, and she managed to smear some dandelion yellow on her facial hair, too. We were alone in the park as far as I could see. It was incredibly peaceful. I reclined with my head cradled in my hands and watched the clouds shift from shape to shape. If Abel doesn’t show up, I just might take a nap. To heck with work and my complicated fiancé.
Snowflake yipped. I sat up and looked around for her. Her ears were perked up and I followed her eyes. She had spotted Abel approaching before I did. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt. The wind lifted his light brown hair, and I could see how thin it was even from this distance. He looked more like a reference librarian or a life insurance actuary than a Mexican food waiter and certainly more like them than the star witness in a high-profile murder trial. He was moving fast, trotting and shooting furtive glances all around. I stood and waved but he didn’t acknowledge me. He neared us and kept going, circling back and around to the opposite side of the trees I’d planted my tush in front of.
“Don’t look at me,” he said, just loud enough for me to hear. “Stay where you are.”
His paranoia seemed almost humorous for a man so benign in appearance, but if he had really seen who murdered Dennis, he had a good reason to be nervous. So far I wasn’t convinced of anything, though, except that he was odd with a capital O.
I pulled the artist sketch from my purse. “Okay, but I have a picture I’d like to show you, Abel.”
Snowflake ignored his instruction and jingled her way around to him.
“Back,” he said, his voice radiating stress like a bronco in a bucking chute. “Back.”
“Snowflake, come—”
I felt a whoosh of air on my face, then heard a thud followed by a hard exhale, almost a grunt. Snowflake went berserko, barking and growling.
I hit the ground on my belly out of instinct, and my heart took off at a full gallop. “Hello?” I whispered.
Abel didn’t answer. I closed my eyes, trying to think and straining to hear whatever was out there as best I could over Snowflake’s noise. Instructions or not, I had to get to the mystery man and Snowflake. I army-crawled on my belly across the grass, around the tree and over toward her sounds. The first thing I saw was Snowflake’s face covered in blood. A strangled scream came out before I could choke it back, and I winced at the sound of my own voice. The second thing I saw was Abel’s supine body, the shaft of an arrow sticking out of his chest. An arrow. Dear God, someone was shooting arrows at us. That’s what I had felt nearly hit me in the face as it made its way to Abel. I started shaking violently, and my hands felt icy cold, like they’d shatter from my tremors.
“Come, girl,” I said, as softly as I could, trying not to telegraph our locatio
n. Snowflake had tangled herself in her leash, and she curved her body in a C-shape and took mincing sidesteps toward me. I turned on my side, and, realizing I still held the police sketch, I dropped it on the ground. Snowflake leapt into my arms, trembling violently, like me. It only took a second of probing gently with my hands to realize she wasn’t hurt. I smoothed her ears back, unwound her leash, and set her on the ground.
I dragged myself the rest of the way around the trees, staying covered as best I could. Abel was flat on his back, his brown eyes wide and his mouth pale, slack, and open. Blood drooled from its corner, but he didn’t make a sound. A lock of his thin hair had fallen onto his forehead. I leaned in and shook him slightly, but the light seemed to fade from his eyes right before me. I laid my fingers across the inside of his wrist. No pulse. My mind flashed back to a cold, lifeless woman in an icy backyard and my dizzying efforts at CPR a few months before. I didn’t want to end up like her or this guy. If I knelt to perform life breaths and chest compressions on this man like I’d done for her, I’d make myself a target. Plus, how much good could I do for a man with an arrow through him? A wave of emotion coursed through me and my lips moved silently as I ground my face into my hands. Please forgive me. I’ll call 911, and maybe, if it’s not already too late for you, someone can help you soon.
Then I forced myself to focus inward. That moment was all I had. I was nearly hyperventilating, and I was wasting time. The man was dead. Whatever secrets he’d held, he’d never share with me. So be it. There was someone out there with a bow and the skill to use it. I needed to figure out how to keep Snowflake and myself alive and to call for help. And my brain needed oxygen to make that happen. If the last few months of hot yoga had taught me nothing else, it was how to breathe. I sucked air in deeply through my nose and pushed it out through my mouth, making a ha sound on my full exhale. I did it again. And again. Then, I gathered up my inner power with a lion’s breath, growling and widening my eyes, feeling like a total idiot yet ten times better all at once. Keep breathing, I told myself.
As I breathed, my brain came alive and I patted my body, searching for my purse strap. Nothing. Still breathing, I reached around the side of the tree back along the path I’d crawled and found it. I jerked it to me, dug my hand into my bag, breathing out, slipping my fingers around the barrel of my little Glock. I drew in a deep breath, then fired three times in the air in rapid succession, hoping to at least let the shooter know I was armed, and maybe alert someone who would call the police. Six rounds left in my gun. Time to call in the cavalry. I worked my phone out of my pocket, gun still at the ready in my right hand, and with my left dialed 911 and texted John Burrows while it connected.
***
The police released me from the scene two agonizing hours later. I reclaimed my wadded-up police sketch, and I drove home to wash my blood-covered dog and change my clothes. I’d texted Jack an update over an hour before, but I still hadn’t heard from him. My heart was heavy with his absence. Besides nearly getting shot, I’d lost our best witness, a witness Jack didn’t even know existed, since we’d barely spoken in two days.
No next of kin had been located for Abel, but I’d just have to pray that I could find someone else in his life who knew what he’d been unable to tell me: who killed Dennis. I’d tack on a prayer that the answer wasn’t Phil, too, because even though I really liked Phil, if there was one thing I knew as the daughter of a murderer, it was that people could surprise you, and not always in good ways. So I could follow up at Abuelo’s and try to talk to Abel’s employer and coworkers, and I could run down Internet info about him, but right now that seemed daunting. Futile. Depressing. Potentially devastating. Maybe I’d feel better when Abel’s blood wasn’t literally on my hands.
Or maybe I’d keep feeling this bad until the police figured out what had happened in the park. They were still processing the scene when they dismissed me, but I already knew from watching and listening that there were no fingerprints on the arrow, nothing left behind except crushed grass where the archer had hidden, and no witnesses found. They didn’t seem to think the information I’d given them was much help, either. I had nothing other than the word of a dead man that we were meeting for him to disclose Dennis’s killer to me. The responding officers seemed more fascinated with the skill they said was required to make a kill shot with a bow from that distance than they were about what they called my “wild theories.” Maybe if John had come it would have been different, but he had texted me that he was forty-five miles away.
I parked the Mustang in the garage and closed it behind me, Snowflake in my arms. Her normally white fur looked like it had been used to mop up cherry Kool-Aid. I shut us in the hall bathroom and filled the tub, then lowered her into the lukewarm water. Red suffused it in seconds. I had to run fresh water three times to turn her white again. Luckily, blood coordinated well with the red barn decorating scheme in the room, because I’d splashed everywhere. I dried Snowflake off with a towel, and she ran in circles with her behind to the ground for a few moments, but then returned to me, still shaking.
After I cleaned the tub, I changed my clothes and looked in the mirror. My damnable braces reflected light back at me, but I didn’t see any more blood. I took the dirty clothes and dropped them in the washer set to cold. I grabbed wet rags and dish soap to take back to the Mustang to clean the leather where Snowflake had discolored it.
It was time to go and that meant I had to put Snowflake out. The girl was rattled, and I felt horrible about leaving her alone in the backyard. We really needed to get her a playmate. Then she wouldn’t be lonely and we wouldn’t have to take her everywhere. But I had to leave, and I could keep an eye on her through the nanny cam. I stopped moving for a second and realized that my entire body was vibrating, like Snowflake’s. I was exhausted. Had I been shaking like this ever since that arrow had pierced Abel’s chest? I clasped my hands together and willed them to stillness. It didn’t work. Well, shaking wouldn’t prevent me from moving on, and that’s what I had to do.
The brush with death had drawn my thoughts to Dennis’s body, then to Phil’s medical predicament. I hadn’t laid eyes on Phil since the day he was admitted, and I needed to see his chest rise and fall with his breath. Maybe I would see something that would rule him out as a killer, or maybe not.
I let Snowflake out and closed the door behind her. She pressed her button nose against the glass. When I walked away, she howled. I pushed my hands against my stomach and forced myself to walk to the garage without looking back. I got into the red Mustang and started scrubbing the seats. With each stroke, a little more of my insides tore loose until I gave in, got out of the car, and collapsed on the garage floor sobbing.
I don’t know how long I lay there, but at some point I drifted off. I woke up to find my face in a muddy pool of drool and my clean clothes covered in dust. I sat up and leaned back against the car, fighting the electrical storm in my head. Why was I falling apart? I’d seen dead people before. But I’ve never watched someone die. A sob broke loose from my throat, proof of the truth in my thoughts. An image of my father—broken, bloody beer bottle in his hand—standing over something just out of my line of sight intruded, but I forced it out before I could see the dead man at his feet.
I care more about this case than most because of Nadine. Tears slid down my face. Life was much easier when I was a paralegal in Dallas for nameless, faceless corporate clients. The stakes in Jack’s cases were so high. So very high. I longed for an executive employment contract or even a discrimination case. Not these life, death, or imprisonment cases. I wiped at my tears.
I’m losing Jack and Betsy like I lost Rich and the baby. A much larger sob ripped through me. No, I am not losing them. I am not, I am not, I am not. I wouldn’t let the Hodges get Betsy, and I had to believe Jack loved me and wasn’t changing his mind, even if he wouldn’t say it and was forgetting to act like it some of the time lately.
And I can’t help Nadine and Phil. I crawled forward and up
to my feet. I could. I was going to help them, I was going to adopt Betsy, I was going to figure out what the heck was wrong with Jack, and I was going to try oh-so-very-hard to forget how Abel’s face looked as life seeped from his body. I brushed the dust off my jeans and scrubbed the dirt off my face with my hands and got in the car.
***
When I got to Phil’s room, no one else was there. I stood in the doorway, taking in the surreal sight of his motionless body and listening to the steady beep of the monitors. I walked over and took hold of his hand, the one without the tubes and needles.
“Sorry about all these machines, about your diabetes, about the murder charge, Phil. I thought I had a breakthrough witness, but someone killed him before he could talk to me. I also called your mother today.” I stopped, unsure what to say next to a man who couldn’t hear me. Or could he? “Hey, Phil, can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can.” I waited a few seconds, noticing the blood on my forearm. How had I missed it? But I got no squeeze so I opened up about his mother. “Well, you’re ten times nicer than I ever would have dreamed you could turn out after talking to your mom. She told me where to find your ex-wife. The cops think you killed Dennis over a woman, if you can believe it. Cecilia maybe. I don’t think so, really, but they do.” I waited again, but still got no squeeze, no flinch, no flicker of eyelids. I stared out the window, searching for something else to say. “This would be a lot easier if you’d just wake up and talk to me, buddy.”
A nurse poked her head in the door. I recognized her. The athlete. “I need to come in and chart his vitals.”
“I was just leaving.” I put his hand down gently on the sheet covering his body, and I walked out of the room, my throat constricted and my eyes burning. I headed straight for the ladies room and scrubbed the last of Abel’s blood off my arm.
Hell to Pay (What Doesn’t Kill You, #7): An Emily Romantic Mystery Page 12